St. Louis, MO (KTRS) An investment into a St. Louis startup company is paying off.

A publicly-traded company from the East Coast has acquired Confluence Life Sciences, which was backed by BioGenerator. It was announced on Tuesday that Confluence Life Sciences, Inc., was purchased by Aclaris Therapeutics, Inc. for $100 million.

“We are thrilled to achieve this significant milestone for the company and its shareholders,” said Joe Monahan, Confluence Life Sciences Co-founder.

“We built a team of proven drug hunters, successfully advanced multiple product candidates to the stage where they are appropriate to partner, and leveraged our profitable service business unit to achieve a financial exit after relatively modest dilutive investment.” Monahan added.

Confluence Life Sciences will stay in St. Louis and maintain its 40 scientists, with the goal of adding more. The acquisition also calls for building a new state-of-the-art lab space in 2018.

Confluence Life Sciences was BioGenerator’s first lab tenant under the leadership of Monahan and the biotech company’s other co-founder, Walter Smith. Both are former Pfizer executives who became entrepreneurs when Pfizer downsized its St. Louis operations. From this turning point, BioGenerator worked with Monahan and Smith to form the company.

Charlie Bolten, vice-president of BioGenerator said this marks the organization’s largest exit to date.

“We really look forward to other exits like this. We have a lot of really strong companies that we’ve built, with really nice portfolios. You will see a series of exits in the coming years.” Bolten said.

BioGenerator’s closing proceeds from its $1.4 million investment in Confluence will be reinvested into new St. Louis companies and used to improve the St. Louis innovation ecosystem. BioGenerator is the investment arm of BioSTL.